Merit badges and the future of our boys

This past Wednesday, I had the privilege of being included in a Boy Scout merit badge training session at the Eddie V. Gray Wetlands center.  The instructor is my friend, Chrissy Butcher and if you haven’t met this lady with the cherub-like disposition and quick smile, you need to. 

I arrived early, as I am wont to do and set up a few items common to the particular subject being covered and we chatted a bit as the boys began to filter in.  Now I have a bit of a teachers background and am pretty far removed from what little Boy Scout training I’ve had and immediately I saw that my mentality towards training needed to slow way down and I mean way down.

In order from left to right: Andrew Beck. Jase Fowers. Caden Crooks, Baytown Bert,
Robert Lopez, Kolton Wingate, Austin Gary, Ricky Shepherd, Nate Eitel, Justyn Putnam 

I have a bull in a china shop mentality when it comes to most everything I approach and rarely take breaks once I start.  For merit badge training, the BSA has a lot of criteria and pages of material to satisfy and Chrissy teaches quite a few of these qualifications and after the usual roll call type stuff was over, she began.

I sat off to the side and watched.  Just guessing mind you and not wanting to insult any of the Scouts, I would put their ages around 12 years; some more, some less.  One boy in particular was enjoying himself above and beyond the others and liked to talk.  I imagine his little score card at school has a lot of marks on it and I was the same way when I was his age –happy go lucky.

This class was all about the – you guessed it, right?  The geocaching merit badge and what they are expected to learn frankly surprised me.  The game is simply not as difficult as the Scout leaders have outlined, but then again, this brings up another observation.

These boys have no idea how much information is being placed before them through this Boy Scout program training.

It became obvious to me 10 minutes into the class and prompted me to quip more than once, “Geeze, boys, the answer is basic Scouting.”  Chrissy graciously allowed my outbursts, as she knew what she was in for with me present, as this is not our first class together.  As I’ve related in my other columns, my Dad was a woodsman of tremendous experience and knowledge and taught my siblings and I a whole bunch of outdoor savvy, without us realizing we were being taught.  Just like the Scouts.

Add into it my own experience I’ve gathered as a hunter, certification as an Emergency Care Attendant, and Hunter Education Instructor training under Judge Jimmy Johnson and I know a thing or two about the outdoors, survival, and woodsmanship – now plus in the thousands of hours I’ve spent in the woods with snakes, spiders, ticks, chiggers, skeeters, and thorns and throw in some feral hogs – all of this learned the old fashioned geocaching way and I rapidly saw the boys did not fully recognize how they are being prepared for the future.

They were there mostly to get the geocaching merit badge – so seeing I had to make a trip to Texas City, Chrissy once again let me off the leash.

The boys are good boys.  I know; I see no tell tale negative sign despite our modern times.  These boys, if they stick with the program and avoid the pitfalls of our worldly culture, are truly the future hope for America.

Each portion of the training had a cause, effect, and remedy section and Chrissy meticulously covered each division, asking the young Scouts for input.  The boys were free to offer solutions and often their lack of putting the dots together would cause my discomfort.  Now mind you, these are 12 year old boys and that is something I had to keep telling myself.

For instance, when first aid was mentioned, they would mumble out an offering like this particular instance was unique and most of them had the First Aid Merit Badge.  Now here is where I saw the gaps.  They saw first aid as separate for each merit badge or dilemma.  First aid is first aid and a whole lot of it is the same regardless if you are camping or on the back porch.  Burns, cuts, shock, CPR, and the list rambles on like a Led Zeppelin song. 

Nate Eitel, Crissy Butcher, and Jase Flowers.  These boys are from Troop 105, 208, and 264.

I’ve said this for years and I’ll repeat it here; teach someone 3 things and if they can put the dots together, you just taught them 10 things.  This dot connects to this dot to this dot.  Some call it common sense.

The same goes for safety.  If you learn about safety and get a merit badge for it and five years later use a Weed-eater without ear plugs and safety glasses, you didn’t connect the dots.

Like I said before, I am not criticizing the Scouts or their marvelous program and I’m especially impressed with Chrissy’s ability to teach the boys with a mother’s touch – something I certainly wouldn’t have recognized as necessary.  I even got her jokes which went right over the boys heads.

Be prepared.  The Boy Scout motto is a good one and probably the one thing I truly retained with my brief brush with the organization, but being prepared not only means having the tools, it means taking the training to heart and connecting the dots.  No one can truly teach the dots part; it has to be acquired on your own, in the field, at home, or in the workplace.

Geocaching, critters, and me

For those who know me, it is no secret I often engage in a rapidly evolving hi-tech game called geocaching.  For those who don’t know, or are unfamiliar with the game, geocaching translates as the recreational activity of hunting for and finding a hidden container with a logbook by means of GPS coordinates posted on a website.

In other words, a geocacher hides a container somewhere and submits the coordinates to geocaching.com and if it satisfies all the requirements, the geocache, or simply put, the cache publishes and to those of us who are premium members, sends out an email or text to let us know a new geocache is available.  This often sets off a competition to be the first to find (FTF) and sign the logbook inside the cache, thus proving the hunter actually was there.

 The game is addicting in the extreme.

As of today, I am ranked 45^th in the southeast Texas (SETX) region, which encompasses a number of million people, with 3782 geocaches found and logged.  In addition, I have hidden and maintain 219 geocaches for other geocache hunters to find.  This second number boosts me very high nationally, as most seasoned geocachers do no hide or maintain nearly this many.

To put this game in perspective, there are currently 2,232,627 active geocaches and over 6 million geocachers worldwide.  You may have a geocache hidden within a block or two of where you live.

The game is played with an App on a Smartphone, especially by “newbies”, but most serious “cachers” use a dedicated Global Positioning Satellite receiver, or GPSr to find and hide their caches.  Non-players are affectionately known as “muggles”, a term borrowed from the Harry Potter series.  Although not nerd and geek inclusive, the game tends to attract people involved in academics, technical crafts, and computer vocations.  It is family safe and many seniors engage in finding geocaches for their hobby of choice and to get exercise.

Many geocache containers are hidden in city parks, along bike trails, inside cemeteries, and other urban settings – but many are hidden in the woods and places no sane person would venture and thus the title of today’s column.

Most of us perpetually have thorn and briar scratches on our arms and legs.  Texas, particularly our part of Texas has a wide variety of plants that grab and puncture every part of your body.  If you haven’t experienced this painful incident, imagine wading through six feet of rose bushes for fifty yards.

Along the way, you may, or may not encounter one or more venomous snakes, banana spiders crawling across your arm and back, clouds of hungry salt grass mosquitoes (mossies), chiggers, and the dreaded Lonestar tick.  I’ve had six ticks on me this year alone and after a single outing north of Beaumont; I had over 50 chiggers on my ankles.  One chigger or redbug bite equates to 7 to 14 days of intense itching.

Now all of these potential scary critters are not what I fear and I will walk through the snakiest looking terrain we have and often do, while wearing shorts.  What I fear is what geocachers encounter in urban settings – the black widow spider.  I’ve came across seven this year alone and on two occasions the spider was sitting on top of the geocache container in a parking lot location.  I do not suffer them to live, unlike the venomous snakes I encounter - I simply walk away from them.

Have you ever heard a banana spider bark?  I didn’t know it was possible until about two months ago and when I breeched the subject to the Baytown Nature Center’s naturalist Crissy Butcher and biologist Sarah Graham, both were skeptical and declared they would have to hear it to believe it.

This particular incident occurred a bit south of Baytown in an abandoned “garage” in some very over-grown woods.  I walked up on a huge Golden silk orb-weaver spider in a web about 5 feet off the ground, but was so caught up in looking for the geocache that I didn’t see it until I all but bumped it with my elbow.  It “barked” at me and shook its web.  I stepped back not believing my ears, so I moved my naked elbow closer to it and once again, it made the noise and shook the web.  For the third time, I moved my elbow in close and yes, once more it jerked and emitted what I can only describe as a tiny barking noise.

Most of us never encounter the variety of critters I mention in this column, even though they exist all around us, but if you become a geocacher, you can pretty much expect to see them often.  On November 2^nd, I will be hosting a free geocaching 101 event booth and workshop at the Baytown Nature Center’s Nurture Nature Festival.  I’ll be at the raised pavilion in back and the class starts at 0800 sharp.